Erotic Khajuraho to Sacred Varanasi

Monday, January 21- Erotic Khajuraho to Sacred Varanasi

Lakshmana Temple

Just when I think that the best part of our trip is behind us, temples worthy of an Indiana Jones adventure await, but instead of the Temples of Doom, we explore the “Temples of Erotica.”  We have all day in Khajuraho to visit the many temple sites and are picked up at 8:30 A.M. by our familiar driver and a new guide. Unfortunately, I do not remember the guides name but both John and I like him immediately. He is middle age, rounded, soft spoken and seemingly wise. He wears an ecru tunic and sarouel pants and imparts the appropriate historical facts to us, at the same time, allowing us the freedom to make our own assessments about the artistic and erotic aspects of the temples.

Equine Erotica

Erotic Embrace

Vishnu's Boar Shrine stands impressively just inside the entrance to this World Heritage Site.

Carved detail on leg of Vishnu's Boar

View of Vishnu's Boar's Legs

Detail on leg of Vishnu's Boar

Detail on leg of Vishnu's Boar

There are many temples dating between 900 A.D. to 1050 A.D. in the Khajuraho temple complex and our tour begins at the Lakshmana, the temple adjacent to the Matangesvara Hindu temple that John and I visited yesterday afternoon. This temple is the largest and most impressive with soaring sikharas (temple rooftops) an ornate silhouette of elaborately carved conicals. 

Chitragupta Temple

Devi_Jagadamba_Temple

Detailed, bas relief friezes embellish the exteriors of all and our guide discusses the more famous, which in many cases are the most erotic. Voluptous women and virle men take pleasure in each other, contorting in various Kama Sutra positions along the exterior walls. Men are intimate with their horses and rows of elephants and monkeys cavort playfully. Many of the carvings are in remarkably pristine condition and the thousands of carvings, depicting the daily activities of the people, help us to visualize their lives. A beautiful woman holds a mirror and looks back over her shoulder, servant girls attend to chores and lovers repeatedly embrace in ecstasy. 

Elephants watching

Orgey

Kama Sutra

Camel and Horse Parade

Musicians

Musicians

Our guide supplies historical information  as we examine the carvings on the first temple but excuses himself and waits on a bench in the shade while John and I move on to temple number 2 and 3. John is thrilled by it all and I watch with delight as he stands on tip toe to take photos of the friezes. He circles the buildings slowly, carefully examining and photographing the friezes that are within his reach and sight. 

John taking photos

John taking photos

I watch John stand on tip toes and lie prone below carved ceilings to take shots looking up and he impishly asks if I think they would mind if he climbed up the wall? (The three dimensional friezes provide tempting grips for any climber to scale to the top of the temple.) 

Looking Up

Looking Up

Interior temple carvings

Our guide periodically checks in with us but we are thoroughly engrossed and contented to move methodically from one site to another. Eventually our guide suggests that we leave, telling us that the temple structures in the distance are very similar and not as well preserved as the ones we have already visited, but John is determined to see each structure and we have been told that we have all day. We explore the interior of the temples, the carvings inside are polished from years of touch and we circumambulate the interiors reverently.

Interior temple carvings

Interior temple carvings

Interior temple shrine

At 12:30, we descend the steps of the final temple site and see our guide anxiously looking for us. There has been a change in our flight schedule to Varanasi and we must leave immediately.  We are disappointed since we are looking forward to having some shopping time in the village square and possibly returning to bronze shop in the old village.  Instead we are hurried through the square past the street vendors, to our waiting car and whisked to the nearby airport.

Varanasi traffic

Khajuraho street vendor

Regretfully, our plane is delayed an hour but we land in Varanasi late afternoon, are met by a new guide and driver and delivered seamlessly to the Taj Gateway Hotel Ganges. This blog is not intended to be a review of our various guides, but the personality and knowledge of each guide makes a huge difference in the experience.  Our Varanasi guide is disappointing in that he cannot bear a moment of silence and prattles on about inconsequential trivia.  He repeatedly tells us that if we wish him to be quiet to tell him so but this is not as easy as it might sound.  In an effort to calm him, we are unnaturally quiet and nonresponsive to his jokes and running commentary but this seems to inspire him to talk more in an effort to fill the silences.

Varanasi flower seller

Varanasi beggars and holy men

The Varanasi Ghats are tonight’s destination and our driver drops us some distance from the river Ganges where he can park and wait for our return.  We walk with our guide through the teeming streets in the direction of the river. The divided city street is wide, wild and crazy with the usual mixture of traffic; cars, motorcycles, tut-tuts, trikes, cows and pedestrians. Shops brimming with colorful goods line either side of the street and the no man’s land between shops and traffic is an obstacle course of pedestrians, children, beggars and carts. The light is fading making the illuminated shops all the more enticing and we wish to explore but know that we are on a schedule and that the Ganges is our destination. Shop vendors beacon us into their stalls and mothers with outstretched palms thrust babies towards us. I maneuver through the chaos, periodically offering coins to the mothers, the disabled, the holy men but the demands are endless.   

Varanasi beggars and holy men

We come to the top of a wide and long stairway, one of the Ganges many ghats. A jumble of wooden boats are moored at the water’s edge below and a vertically descending row of a dozen holy men sit cross legged with bowls in front of them. These bearded men, faces etched by time, wisdom and hardship wear soiled tunics of saffron, yellow and white and for a coin or two, allow me to take their photographs. 

Varanasi Ghat

Varanasi Ghat

I am not clear on tonight’s plan and our guide suggests that we hire a boat to row us down river to a funeral ghat where we will be able to see the cremation fires at night. The area above the “log jam” of waiting boats is being prepared for tonight’s prayer festivities and I am torn between wanting to sit above the river and look down, or be in a boat, on the river looking up. Our guide tells us that the price for the boat is not included in our tour but that it costs only 700 rupees ($10) and that we can pay him and he will arrange it. It is not the money that is of concern but I have read in the Lonely Planet guide book that one can hire a boat for 100-200 rupees and I want to be sure that the boatman, not our guide, gets the 700 rupees.  

Our boatman

Funeral ghats at dusk

It is near dark when the three of us climb aboard the small wooden boat. Other boats are filling with tourists and young boys with baskets of floating candle votives, walk nimbly between the boats selling their prayer votives. 

Boy selling floating flower votives

Funeral ghat

John suggests we buy a dozen but regretfully, I have not quite grasped the spirit of the river and buy only 5. We paddle silently down river towards the cremation ghat only slightly aware of the many other boats gliding along side of us, silhouetted reflections in the dark water.  We stop 100 meters from shore and watch as shrouded bodies adorned with orange flowers are submerged in the river, anointed by the holy water and placed onto waiting funeral pyres. 5 or 6 fires alternately blaze and smolder attended by priest, family and friends. This is a sacred setting and we are awed by the beauty and the holiness. 

Funeral ghat

Unfortunately, our guide continues his irritating commentary, even when John begins to light the votives and places them one by one in the river. John lights three to honor his friends who have died and we light the remaining two for mom and for Mizuho. Our emotions swell and I begin to cry and know that when we are back at the dock, we will buy more to set afloat to honor the memory of other departed friends and family. Our votives drift with the current, joining others and glinting bright against the midnight black of the river.

Lighting a prayer votive

Setting a prayer votive afloat

Our boat paddler, rows us back to the main ghat where a prayer ceremony is about to begin. We remain seated in our boat and watch the ceremony unfold. Other barefoot boys are peddling baskets of the flower votives and I purchase 12.  There are 4 or 5 ceremonial stages along the edge of the ghat and priests begin to gesture and chant. Festive stage lights blaze, music swells and the chanting reverberates in the night. 

Holy celebration

Holy celebration

Holy celebration

Since my tears, our guide has remained blessedly quiet but he now mindfully suggests that this would be a good time to set the other prayer votives adrift.  A breeze comes up and John struggles to light them and we prayerfully set one after another into the river in rememberance of cherished departed friends and family. 

Pilgrims

Devotees

Devotees

The chanting continues for nearly an hour but when the ceremonies end, we disembark our small boat and walk up the many stairs of the ghat amidst the throngs of humanity, on the Ganges River.    

Holy man

Holy man

Varanasi Ghat Celebration

Our evening tour is at an end and our guide expects to return us to the safety of our hotel but John and I wish to have dinner in the area, at the Dolphin Café, overlooking the river and recommended in the Lonely Planet guide book. Our guide is unsettled by our request and asks how we plan to get back to our hotel? He walks with us to the Dolphin Café and guest house and explains to the concierge that we will need a tut-tut after our dinner there. He warns us to be careful and writes both the name of our hotel and his cell number on a piece of paper and departs. 

Holy cow, shopping the bazaar

Evening bazaar

Evening cafe

John and I hurry back to the bustle of the main shopping street and walk down several narrow souks, ogling the colorful embroidered dresses, pashima scarves, spices and brass figurines. John admires the embroidered mens tunics and pants and we step up into a small shop and with the speed of a magician, the merchant quickly has John dressed in a creamy ensemble. After we have paid the modest amount for the outfit, the merchant suggests a "hat" and leaves us alone and in charge of his shop, returning 10 minutes later with an assortment of colorful  turbans fit for a Maharaja. John chooses one and we laugh over the logistics of transporting it back home in an un-crumpled state; perhaps John will need to wear it? 

Maharaja John

Merchant with John

It must be nearly 9:00 P.M. when hunger gets the better of us and we return to the ghat, now dark and nearly deserted and climb the many flights of stairs up to the rooftop Dolphin Café. We pass a few parties, descending after finishing their dinner and one couple assures us that it it’s worth the climb. We sit outside, the only diners at this late hour, overlooking the river and the main ghat, that just two hours ago was brilliantly illuminated and crowded with humanity.  We share a beer and wait for our tandori chicken, rice and sweet cheese stuffed potatoes to arrive.  All is delicious and the end to a near perfect day.

The concierge phones for a tut-tut driver who appears shortly in the downstairs Dolphin Guest House lobby and we follow our driver along a dark and narrow alley to the main street where his tut-tut waits. He ties down the canvas sides to the tut-tut, cocooning us against the cold wind and John and I huddle together in the back seat in an effort to keep warm. 20 minutes later he drops us outside the gates of our hotel; 5 star hotel security being rigid throughout India. John and I nod to the night guardsmen and pass into the grounds of the hotel to find a wedding party in full swing on the expansive back lawn and patio. Hundreds of wedding guests jam the hotels circular driveway and a 6 piece band blasts trumpets in anticipation of the groom’s arrival. Two dozen dancers twirl and sway wearing meter high, lighted and rotating headdresses, adding to the festivities and illuminating the procession. We observe with amusement, that each lighted head piece is connected by a long cable to a battery powered cart that rolls along in unison with the tethered dancers.  We are not invited guests and John and I stay a respectful distance back, straining to catch a glimpse of the bride or groom, above the heads of the gathered crowd. 

Lighted wedding celebration parade

We enter the hotel, surmising that we will be able to see more of the wedding festivities through the windows of our hotel’s restaurant. Other hotel guests have the same idea and we sit at one of the few remaining window tables adjacent to the back garden patio. We order yet another beer and sit for nearly an hour watching the marriage celebration of an apparently important and wealthy couple. The guest attire is impeccable and formal. A mixed group of elegantly dressed teens sit together at a patio table and the girls eye John through the glass. Just as in America, the young people sip their drinks, awkwardly adjust their uncomfortable clothing and fiddle with their cell phones.  We do not see the bride but eventually an older groom arrives on horseback with a boy of about 5 seated in front of him. We have seen other wedding processions on the streets and all the grooms ride double with a young boy in front. From what I have learned, this is a symbol of luck and the couples desire to bear children. We are told that the festivities will continue for several more hours but John and I have had our fill of this “ball” and before the clock strikes 12:00 P.M. and we turn into pumpkins, we head upstairs to our room to sleep.